But back to my story... In the first swap I took part in there were two strings with 9 people in each. The first challenge string was to use a button on the ATC. Here’s my take on it.
It was made from scraps that I had. I stamped the SU! butterfly stamp onto a piece of white cardstock with some rainbow ink that I had not used in years. I cut the butterfly out, then stuck it to a piece of yellow gingham paper which I had rounded the corners of. I strung some seed beads on to make the butterfly body, and sewed some antennae on with silver thread. I sewed a silver swirl onto the patterned paper and added the requisite button. I stuck the patterned paper, butterfly and button onto some yellow cardstock and wrote the word Life in purple pen on the side. I finished it off with a doodled border in purple pen.
The second challenge string was to make an ATC using black and white and one other colour. I decided to use gold. I had an idea, but when I started to make it it turned into something completely different! In the end, this is what I made.
I stamped and embossed the angel onto scrap white cardstock, then cut it out. I printed the saying “Friendship is a knot that angel hands have tied” nine times onto white cardstock. I overstamped it in gold ink using my “En Français” SU! stamp. I punched it out with a SU! label punch and drew a border around the edge with gold pen. I then made a friendship knot from gold ribbon. I used these instructions.
After cutting the black and white patterned paper (from my TLC stash), I distressed the edges and attached it to the black cardstock base. I added the angel stamp, the friendship knot and the saying, which I attached with gold eyelets and rhinestones. I stitched a small corner using daisy chain stitch in gold thread, and added a gold photo corner sticker. This was my least favourite of the two ATCs I made, mostly because it didn’t turn out how I had envisioned it in my head.
I really enjoyed the whole process of making the ATCs and was keen to participate in the second swap in August/September. There were 9 people again participating in two strings. The theme of the first string was “hot pink and orange”. I decided to use the new Kaisercraft flourish stamp I had recently purchased. I wanted to try using the emboss resist technique. Unfortunately it didn’t work the way it was meant to, probably because I was using the wrong type of ink, but it still turned out ok. I ended us stamping everyone’s initials in hot pink and cutting them out. I attached each letter along with a felt flower from the Flower Fusion set from SU! using a brad. Finally I attached the stamped design to a piece of hot pink cardstock. I think these turned out really nicely.
The fourth cards that I made were about birds. These are my favourite ATCs of the bunch. I printed the saying “It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds. ~ Aesop” onto some green SU! patterned paper. Then I just started adding feathers and cardstock leaves punched out with the SU! two step bird punch. I finished each ‘nest’ with a little cardstock bird from Scrapmatts which I had coloured with my Sakura pens. Each ATC was slightly different because of the feathers, but each one turned out nicely. It was hard trying to decide which one to keep for myself! Here’s what they looked like.
This month, I entered another ATC swap at CRII. There were only 7 people participating this time. The theme for the first string was Pink & Lime, a Tropical Christmas. For some reason the first thing that came into my head was palm trees. So I set out in search of palm tree clip art to download from the internet. Sadly I didn’t record where I found this tree (so if anyone can tell me, please do so I can give proper credit). I printed seven copies on thick white card, and coloured them in with my watercolour pencils, then cut them out. I stuck them to the pink cardstock, added a little bell with lime green floss, and stamped a Merry Christmas circle stamp (maker unknown), with a small square stamp from studio g (VC0012 Series 32) and inked the edges of the card, all with SU! green galore ink. I added a bit of sparkle with my pink Sakura star pen to some of the stars between the Merry Christmas words. Here it is.
The last ATC that I made is one of my favourites. The theme was Gothic Arch. There are some absolutely stunning samples out there on the internet which made my first attempt look absolutely juvenile. I ended up redoing them. I printed my saying “open your heart and let your love fly free” onto some green TLC paper from my stash. The font I used is called Angelic War. I can’t find any reference to this saying anywhere. As it just popped in my head, I’m thinking that I made it up, please correct me if I’m wrong though! Anyway, I cut the words out and used my distressing tool to distress the edges of the paper. I then stamped the SU! kiwi kiss green cardstock with clear Versamark ink. I used the butterfly, flowers and swirls stamp from Autumn Leaves Block Stamps 2. then I cut out the gothic arch shape from the cards. Next I stamped the border stamp from SU! vintage vogue set in bronze versamark ink along the bottom of each card. Then I stamped the flower swirl stamp from the same set at the top left side of the arch. I punched the hearts from some scrap paper from my stash and then it was time to put it al together. I added a gold heart brad to the cards, then realised that I was 3 brads short! I ended up using Stamp N Bond to add glitter to the brads. Then the gold ones didn’t look good anymore, so I glittered them too. I added some pink coloured wings, antennae and a little trail to each brad so it looked kind of like an insect. When I showed the new card and the old card to Logan he said the new ones were a gazillion times better! I agree! I hope the ladies like them.
I’d love to know what you think of my ATCs. Please leave me a comment, I love reading them. It’s great to know I can share my work with people all over the world through my blog.
Till next time, happy days!
Francine
